WASHINGTON — The questions that Janet L. Yellen faced on Thursday from senators considering her nomination to lead the Federal Reserve made two things fairly clear: The job is hers, and it’s not going to be easy.

Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee treated Ms. Yellen as if she were already the Fed’s chairwoman, skipping over questions about her qualifications and instead venting broad frustrations about the slow pace of economic growth.

Ms. Yellen, the Fed’s vice chairwoman since 2010, faced particularly sharp questions about the limited success of the Fed’s efforts to stimulate the economy. Members of both parties questioned whether the Fed’s policies had mostly benefited the wealthy, while doing little to improve life for most Americans.

The Fed’s campaign to hold down interest rates was described as “an elitist policy” by Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, and as “a sort of trickle-down economics” by Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat.

“It’s not clear to the many Americans who have not seen a raise in a number of years, that this policy increases wages and incomes for workers on Main Street,” Mr. Brown said. “During your time as chair, tell us how you will ensure that the Fed’s monetary policy directly benefits families on Main Street.”

Ms. Yellen, 67, avoided any surprises in her calm and careful responses, which hewed closely to the Fed’s official positions and her own past remarks. She made clear that she was committed to continuing the Fed’s stimulus campaign, which she said had “made a meaningful contribution to economic growth.”

She acknowledged that investors benefited from low interest rates, in part because they helped lift the stock market, but she said that people buying homes and cars also were direct beneficiaries. And she emphasized the indirect benefits of the Fed’s campaign: “The ripple effects go through the economy and bring benefits to, I would say, all Americans.”

The performance appeared to serve its purpose. The office of Senator Tim Johnson, the South Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the committee, said a vote could come as early as next week to send her nomination to the full Senate.

“We need her expertise at the helm of the Fed as the nation continues to recover from the Great Recession,” Mr. Johnson said at the hearing.

Ms. Yellen will need at least five Republican votes to reach the 60-vote threshold that the minority party routinely imposes on presidential nominees.

The votes may not be hard to find. Mr. Corker appeared to be trying to help Ms. Yellen when he asked her to state for the record how many times she had voted as a Fed official to raise interest rates, thus demonstrating a commitment to control inflation. When she said that she could not remember precisely, Mr. Corker supplied an answer: 27 times, dating back to 1994, when she first joined the Fed’s Board of Governors.

But David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, said after the hearing that he planned to vote against her, citing in particular Ms. Yellen’s views on financial regulation.

Photo

Janet Yellen, President Obama’s choice to head the Federal Reserve for the next four years, answered questions from the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

“I was leaning no and I am going to vote no,” Mr. Vitter told Fox Business Network. “Unfortunately none of her answers were reassuring to me, including about my biggest concern about the continuation of too big to fail.”

Mr. Vitter had plenty of company in raising concerns about the Fed’s commitment to regulating big banks, an indication of the importance attached in the wake of the financial crisis to a set of responsibilities that the Fed and Congress long treated as an afterthought.

Some of the strongest questions came from Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, who criticized the Fed for its regulatory failings before the crisis and expressed concern that it still was not trying hard enough.

“The truth is if the regulators had done their jobs and reined in the banks we wouldn’t need to be talking about” stimulus, Ms. Warren said.

Ms. Yellen held her ground. She did not concede that the Fed’s failures played a role in the crisis — something Fed officials have acknowledged in other contexts — even as she insisted that the Fed was working hard to prevent a repeat.

“I absolutely believe our supervisory responsibilities are critical and they’re just as important as monetary policy and we need to take them just as seriously,” she said.

Ms. Warren and other senators also pressed Ms. Yellen to explain why the Fed was taking so long to impose new restrictions on large banks, and whether she considered the restrictions authorized by current law sufficient.

Ms. Yellen said she would withhold judgment until the regulatory work was complete.

Senators spent little time examining the Fed’s near-term plans, and Ms. Yellen offered little new information in her debut as the Fed’s leading explainer.

She generally cast herself as committed to continuing the policies of the current Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke. She said economic growth was strong enough for the Fed to pull back from its stimulus campaign by reducing its monthly bond purchases, but that officials needed to be convinced growth would not falter when they did so.

Any differences were a matter of emphasis: a little more willingness to constrain large banks, or to press ahead with asset purchases.

The Fed is expanding its holdings of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities by $85 billion a month to drive down borrowing costs for businesses and consumers. Some Fed officials are concerned that the asset purchases are undermining financial stability by leading to excesses in certain markets. Ms. Yellen said the Fed was paying close attention to that possibility, but “at this stage I do not see risks to financial stability.”

In response to questioning by Senator Mike Crapo, Republican of Idaho, Ms. Yellen acknowledged that “this program cannot continue forever,” but she also made clear that she saw no reason to pull back other than stronger growth.

“I consider it imperative,” she said, “that we do what we can to promote a very strong recovery.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 15, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Focus Is on Economy At Yellen Hearing: Senators Express
Frustration
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